Teacher Professional Development at Scale in Indonesia: A Collective Case Study of Three Teacher Learning Centres

As a founding member of the Teacher Professional Development at Scale (TPD@
Scale) Coalition for the Global South, Putera Sampoerna Foundation (PSF) revamped
its Teacher Learning Centre (TLC) program and its overall objectives in 2019 to
better support the professional development of Indonesian teachers. PSF TLC
aims to provide teachers with localized support and broader access to quality
professional development (face-to-face and online), learning facilities, and resources
in a local setting.

Effective teacher professional development (TPD) (Darling-Hammond, Hyler,
& Gardner, 2017) and learning at scale helped give rise to TPD@Scale where
information and communication technologies (ICTs) are used to enhance quality,
equity, and efficiency (TPD@Scale Coalition, 2019). PSF TLC focuses on the
contextualized and needs-driven professional development activities (quality),
wider local teachers’ TPD opportunities and engagement (equity), and the utilization
of available ICT resources to ensure cost-effectiveness and promote lifelong
professional learning (efficiency), resulting in the progressive improvement of
teachers’ capacity in pedagogical knowledge, ICT skills, and quality teaching and
learning. As teachers develop a higher teaching confidence level gained from TPD,
they apply various pedagogical and ICT innovations in their classrooms to enhance
student engagement and learning outcomes. PSF TLC ensures that equity is attained
along with quality. TLC is made available to all teachers in rural and remote areas,
regardless of gender, ethnicity, geographical location, etc.

This study focused on three out of 10 TLCs in the regencies of Gowa (South
Sulawesi), Karawang (West Java), and Kudus (Central Java). Each TLC independently
conducted face-to-face and online activities based on the needs of local schools and
teachers and designed its programs to support TPD and overcome local constraints.
These learning centres successfully ran several TPD sessions by utilizing available
resources in 2020/2021, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study examined the progress and impacts of the PSF TLC in 2020, with 326 valid
survey responses collected from teachers who participated in PSF TLCs in the three
above-mentioned areas. The findings showed: First, the mode and the sustainability
of PSF TLC were workable in providing contextualized, need-driven, and quality TPD.
Second, that ICT played an increasingly important role in the efficiency of TPD and
quality education. Third, that PSF TLCs supported teachers with different traits, such
as educational background, employment status (state or private), school types,
and gender.

While the teacher participants in this study generally saw the TPD activities and
resources as improving their professional learning and classroom teaching, this
study found that their employment status was a key determining factor in this
perception, and the state-employed teachers, as compared to those teachers inprivate schools, considered the training activities and materials at PSF TLC as more suitable to their classroom practice. However, the privately employed teachers
reported their observation of an increase in students’ engagement when they applied
what they learned from PSF TLC TPD. While activities and resources are likely to have
considerable impacts on the effectiveness of PSF TLC and quality TPD in the long
run, activities and resources may need to cater to teachers from different
school types.

Furthermore, TLC collaborations with universities and other agencies and
organizations have provided a validated set of TPD activities and resources for
pre-service teachers, equipping them with a more comprehensive real-world
teaching experience.

Future research on TLCs could examine the correlation between the teachers’
educational background and the TPD activities, and between teachers’ professional
learning and students’ engagement in schools.